It's unlikely at this stage it's possible to bootstrap a company that makes CPUs, GPUs, etc, so it seems to me the US government wants to hedge their bets and keep Intel alive for now. $25B in total is a small price to pay for that.
That being said, I would've preferred it's not Intel that gets the life-line.
And all rely on ASML, though some of their EUV stuff was in part tech transfer from a US government collab that included Intel (EUV LLC), and that's why we have still have some security veto over selling EUV machines to China.
The thing is that it’s not leading edge chips that are the most important for most consumer goods like cars and random other products. It’s the trailing edge chips that companies like TSMC is manufacturing on fully depreciated equipment.
While it makes no sense financially for a new company to buy equipment to build trailing edge chips, it’s perfectly logical for TSMC just to keep old fans running
They could force them to license the production to one to three other companies who kick back a percentage of the profits to Intel. That makes two to four suppliers who receive the $25 billion. Then, we have competing firms.
If they think that’s unfair, they can quit asking for our tax dollars to expand their for-profit businesses.
Nobody needs to force Intel to do this, Intel is already doing it. They manufacture other company's designs for hire. Opening up their foundries for use by other companies is part of Intel's current business strategy.
There are only three companies in the world with cutting edge semiconductor manufacturing capability: Samsung, TSMC and Intel.
You just argued with yourself. You said there’s only three suppliers, two of which the U.S. wants to avoid. Then, that Intel is controlling and benefiting from how those projects are manufactured. That means the billions would shore up a domestic monopoly that’s in a tiny oligopoly.
My proposal would use our tax dollars to create plants that use Intel technology, but aren’t under their control, with different business strategies, operational priorities, and money going to other directors. The supplier diversity would increase competition domestically while strengthening us. While not done the same way, my precedents for increasing suppliers are Intel having to license to AMD and IBM licensing to Freescale.
Ok, I misunderstood what you meant. I thought you meant license access to the foundry, like TSMC does.
What you're proposing is that the US stand up a semiconductor fab that can compete with Intel. That's going to be hard!
I think "use Intel technology" is a lot less practical than it might seem. After all, Intel uses ASML technology, and anyone with enough money can buy the machinery (as long as they're not based in China). Intel manufacturing tech is the sum total of all the skill and expertise of Intel's employees.
That being said, I would've preferred it's not Intel that gets the life-line.